Call us:
0-9
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z
  Fabian Society  ·  Face  ·  Factory  ·  Facts  ·  Failure  ·  Fairy  ·  Faith  ·  Fake (I)  ·  Fake (II)  ·  Falkland Islands & Falklands War  ·  Fall (Drop)  ·  False  ·  False Flag Attacks & Operations  ·  Fame & Famous  ·  Familiarity  ·  Family  ·  Famine  ·  Fanatic & Fanaticism  ·  Fancy  ·  Fantasy & Fantasy Films  ·  Farm & Farmer  ·  Fascism & Fascist  ·  Fashion  ·  Fast Food  ·  Fasting  ·  Fat  ·  Fate  ·  Father  ·  Fault  ·  Favourite & Favouritism  ·  FBI  ·  Fear  ·  Feast  ·  Federal Reserve  ·  Feel & Feeling  ·  Feet & Foot  ·  Fellowship  ·  FEMA  ·  Female & Feminism  ·  Feng Shui  ·  Fentanyl  ·  Ferry  ·  Fiction  ·  Field  ·  Fight & Fighting  ·  Figures  ·  Film Noir  ·  Films & Movies (I)  ·  Films & Movies (II)  ·  Finance  ·  Finger & Fingerprint  ·  Finish  ·  Finite  ·  Finland & Finnish  ·  Fire  ·  First  ·  Fish & Fishing  ·  Fix  ·  Flag  ·  Flattery  ·  Flea  ·  Flesh  ·  Flood  ·  Floor  ·  Florida  ·  Flowers  ·  Flu  ·  Fluoride  ·  Fly & Flight  ·  Fly (Insect)  ·  Fog  ·  Folk Music  ·  Food (I)  ·  Food (II)  ·  Fool & Foolish  ·  Football & Soccer (I)  ·  Football & Soccer (II)  ·  Football & Soccer (III)  ·  Football (American)  ·  Forbidden  ·  Force  ·  Forced Marriage  ·  Foreign & Foreigner  ·  Foreign Relations  ·  Forensic Science  ·  Forest  ·  Forgery  ·  Forget & Forgetful  ·  Forgive & Forgiveness  ·  Fort Knox  ·  Fortune & Fortunate  ·  Forward & Forwards  ·  Fossils  ·  Foundation  ·  Fox & Fox Hunting  ·  Fracking  ·  Frailty  ·  France & French  ·  Frankenstein  ·  Fraud  ·  Free Assembly  ·  Free Speech  ·  Freedom (I)  ·  Freedom (II)  ·  Freemasons & Freemasonry  ·  Friend & Friendship  ·  Frog  ·  Frost  ·  Frown  ·  Fruit  ·  Fuel  ·  Fun  ·  Fundamentalism  ·  Funeral  ·  Fungi  ·  Funny  ·  Furniture  ·  Fury  ·  Future  
<F>
Finance
F
  Fabian Society  ·  Face  ·  Factory  ·  Facts  ·  Failure  ·  Fairy  ·  Faith  ·  Fake (I)  ·  Fake (II)  ·  Falkland Islands & Falklands War  ·  Fall (Drop)  ·  False  ·  False Flag Attacks & Operations  ·  Fame & Famous  ·  Familiarity  ·  Family  ·  Famine  ·  Fanatic & Fanaticism  ·  Fancy  ·  Fantasy & Fantasy Films  ·  Farm & Farmer  ·  Fascism & Fascist  ·  Fashion  ·  Fast Food  ·  Fasting  ·  Fat  ·  Fate  ·  Father  ·  Fault  ·  Favourite & Favouritism  ·  FBI  ·  Fear  ·  Feast  ·  Federal Reserve  ·  Feel & Feeling  ·  Feet & Foot  ·  Fellowship  ·  FEMA  ·  Female & Feminism  ·  Feng Shui  ·  Fentanyl  ·  Ferry  ·  Fiction  ·  Field  ·  Fight & Fighting  ·  Figures  ·  Film Noir  ·  Films & Movies (I)  ·  Films & Movies (II)  ·  Finance  ·  Finger & Fingerprint  ·  Finish  ·  Finite  ·  Finland & Finnish  ·  Fire  ·  First  ·  Fish & Fishing  ·  Fix  ·  Flag  ·  Flattery  ·  Flea  ·  Flesh  ·  Flood  ·  Floor  ·  Florida  ·  Flowers  ·  Flu  ·  Fluoride  ·  Fly & Flight  ·  Fly (Insect)  ·  Fog  ·  Folk Music  ·  Food (I)  ·  Food (II)  ·  Fool & Foolish  ·  Football & Soccer (I)  ·  Football & Soccer (II)  ·  Football & Soccer (III)  ·  Football (American)  ·  Forbidden  ·  Force  ·  Forced Marriage  ·  Foreign & Foreigner  ·  Foreign Relations  ·  Forensic Science  ·  Forest  ·  Forgery  ·  Forget & Forgetful  ·  Forgive & Forgiveness  ·  Fort Knox  ·  Fortune & Fortunate  ·  Forward & Forwards  ·  Fossils  ·  Foundation  ·  Fox & Fox Hunting  ·  Fracking  ·  Frailty  ·  France & French  ·  Frankenstein  ·  Fraud  ·  Free Assembly  ·  Free Speech  ·  Freedom (I)  ·  Freedom (II)  ·  Freemasons & Freemasonry  ·  Friend & Friendship  ·  Frog  ·  Frost  ·  Frown  ·  Fruit  ·  Fuel  ·  Fun  ·  Fundamentalism  ·  Funeral  ·  Fungi  ·  Funny  ·  Furniture  ·  Fury  ·  Future  

★ Finance

Too big to fail?  Well here it is.  ibid.  Paulson

 

What do I say when they ask me why it wasn’t regulated?  ibid.  press Relations woman

 

We need an announcement tonight to calm the market; we need legislation next week.  ibid.  Paulson

 

Buying toxic assets is not going to work.  ibid.

 

How do you get a healthy bank to accept a capital injection?  ibid.

 

They almost bring down the US economy as we know it, but we can’t put restrictions on $125 billion?  ibid.  press woman

 

Following the passage of TARP banks made fewer loans and markets continued to tumble.  Unemployment rose to over 10% and millions of families lost their homes to foreclosure.  ibid.  caption

 

In 2010 compensation on Wall Street rose to a record $135 billion.  Ten banks now hold 77% of all US bank assets.  They have been declared too big to fail.  ibid.

 

 

Have you taken a large home loan?  Or did you put your savings in stocks, mutual funds or bonds?  If not, you can relax.  But all of us who did are living on borrowed time.  This is the story of the greatest financial crisis of our time: the one that is on its way.  Overdose: The Next Financial Crisis, 2010; viz also Johan Norberg, Financial Fiasco

 

In 2003 it [interest rates] was cut all the way to 1%.  ibid.

 

Greenspan argued that the Fed should never remove the punch bowl.  But rather start refilling it when the party started to peter out.  And if things went bad, the Fed would clean up the mess and tend to the hangover.  ibid.

 

The big banks dared to make riskier loans because they had started repackaging loans and selling them to others as securities.  ibid.

 

The rating agencies that rate securities gave the mortgage-backed bonds their highest rating ... The rating agencies were being paid by the sellers of securities.  ibid.

 

The difference is that this bubble is much bigger.  ibid.

 

Even banks who don’t want the money will be forced to take it, so that the public won’t know which banks are on the brink of collapse.  ibid.

 

Congress approves the biggest financial bail-out in history: $700 billion.  ibid. 

 

President Bush gives billions of dollars to General Motors and Chrysler.  ibid.

 

On February 7th 2009 Obama approves a stimulus package worth $787 billion; with the Bush stimulus package from the year before, US politicians have now spent close to $1 trillion to stimulate the US economy.  ibid.

 

We have been saved from the consequences of one burst bubble by inflating a hundred new ones all around the world.  ibid.

 

Bush almost racked up more US debt that all presidents before him combined.  ibid.

 

 

The City is far more dishonest than anything I did before.  The biggest organised crime in Britain was performed by the government stealing something the British people already owned and selling it back to them.  Charlie Richardson, London gangsta, worked in City on release from prison 1984

 

 

Left and right mean nothing.  The only thing that counts is – are you working for Wall Street or are you trying to defend the people against the financiers?  Webster Tarpley, author & journalist & lecturer

 

 

New York 2010 Jon Corzine: M F Global.  Its business was brokerage ... Risk: M F Global would start taking risks itself in the market.  Bankers II: Risking It All, BBC 2013

     

The story of how a London team of J P Morgan traders lost $6 billion last year shows how even a well-run bank can take ever more complex and risky gambles.  ibid.  

 

From the late 1990s banks lent around $1 trillion to Americans on low incomes to buy houses.  ibid.

 

In 2008 the financial crash hit the world like a natural disaster.  ibid.

 

Nothing on this scale had been predicted by Value at Risk.  Nearly $3 trillion was lost.  ibid.

 

Synthetic derivatives: one of the biggest bets the world has ever seen.  ibid.

 

One of the biggest financial bankruptcies since the crash: M F Global.  ibid.

 

J P Morgan had little choice but to sell off the Whale Trades at a huge loss.  ibid.

 

 

But in 2000 Iceland’s government began a broad policy of deregulation that would have disastrous consequences.  Charles H Ferguson, Inside Job, 2010

 

In a five-year period these three tiny banks which had never operated outside of Iceland borrowed $120 billion – ten times the size of Iceland’s economy.  The bankers showered money on themselves, each other and their friends.  ibid.

 

When Iceland’s banks collapsed at the end of 2008 unemployment tripled in six months.  ibid.  

 

In September 2008 the bankruptcy of US Investment Bank Lehman Brothers and the collapse of the world’s largest insurance company AIG triggered a global financial crisis.  The result was a global recession.  ibid.

 

This crisis was not an accident.  It was caused by an out-of-control industry.  ibid.

 

In the 1980s the financial industry exploded; the investment banks went public giving them huge amounts of stockholder money.  People on Wall Street started getting rich.  ibid.

 

By the end of the decade hundreds of savings and loans companies had failed ... Thousands of Savings & Loans executives went to jail for looting their companies.  One of the most extreme cases was Charles Keating.  ibid.

 

By the late 1990s the financial sector had consolidated into a few gigantic firms; each of them so large their failure could threaten the whole financial sector.  ibid.

 

In December 2002 ten investment banks settled the case for a total of $1.4 billion and promised to mend their ways.  ibid.

 

Since deregulation began the world’s biggest financial firms have been caught laundering money, defrauding customers and cooking their books again and again and again.  ibid.

 

Using derivatives, bankers could bet on virtually anything ... A fifty trillion unregulated market.  ibid.

 

In the early 2000s there was a huge increase in the riskiest loans called subprimes.  ibid.

 

The investment banks actually preferred subprime loans because they carried higher interest rates.  ibid.

 

Lehman Brothers was the top underwriter of subprime lending.  ibid.

 

The Securities and Exchange Commission conducted no major investigations of the investment banks during the bubble.  ibid.

 

Credit Default Swaps worked like an insurance policy ... Speculators could also buy Credit Default Swaps from AIG in order to bet against CDOs they didn’t own.  ibid.

 

According to a Bloomberg article business entertainment represents 5% of revenue for New York derivatives traders and often includes strip clubs, prostitutes and drugs.  ibid.

 

Goldman Sachs sold at least $3.1 billion of these toxic CDOs in the first half of 2006.  ibid.

 

By late 2006 Goldman had taken things a step further: it didn’t just sell toxic CDOs it started actively betting against them at the same time.  ibid.

 

The three ratings agencies – Moody’s, S&P [Standard & Poor] & Fitch made billions of dollars giving high ratings to risky securities.  ibid.

 

As early as 2004 the FBI was already warning of an epidemic of mortgage fraud.  ibid.

 

The market for CDOs collapsed.  ibid.

 

In March 2008 the investment bank Bear Stearns ran out of cash and was acquired for $2 a share by J P Morgan Chase.  The deal was backed by $30 billion in emergency guarantees from the Federal Reserve.  ibid.

 

Neither Lehman nor the federal government had done any planning for bankruptcy.  ibid.

 

The AIG bailout cost taxpayers over $150 billion.  ibid.

 

The men who destroyed their own companies and plunged the world into crisis walked away from the wreckage with their fortunes intact.  ibid. 

 

It has corrupted the study of economics itself.  ibid.

 

Even after the crisis many of them opposed reform.  ibid.

 

Mid-2010 not a senior financial executive had been criminally prosecuted or even arrested.  ibid.

 

The financial system turned its back on society, corrupted our political system and plunged the world economy into crisis.  ibid.

 

 

It wasnt the government that got us into this mess – if what you mean by mess is an ugly recession, an unbalanced economy, profound uncertainty over recovery, grossly indebted consumers, disadvantaged communities hit hard again and a budget deficit of £175 billion.  What got us into this mess above all was the 30-year rise of Big Finance before which governments unfurled the white flag.  Bankers used their power to bend the rules at home and abroad, to lend ever more riskily and supported by less capital, until, finally, a vastly overextended banking system backed by very little capital collapsed.  The result is today’s economic calamity.

4